| At 2:15 in the afternoon on March 23rd, our two daughters, Sara Marie and Soraya Sophie were rushed out of the delivery room and into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Where most parents are allowed to hold their children just after birth, I was only allowed to reach through tiny holes in a small plastic incubator for about 15 seconds, before they were taken away surrounded by doctors and nurses. That is how I welcomed our 2.6lb and 3.3lb, 9-week-premature daughters into the world. Never again would I allow my contact with them be so brief.
Although I could not see our babies again for about 5 hours, my wife Mariana was unable to see them for even longer. It was almost 36 hours after her C-section before she could sit up well enough to get into a wheelchair and the babies were unable to leave the NICU to visit her in the hospital room. Every day from that point on, my wife or I (or sometimes both) would spend hours in the NICU each day. We would talk to them, sing to them, change them and help feed them. For the first 5 weeks of what would turn out to be a 3-month hospital stay, they were fed through a tube and kept in a high-risk private room. They were hooked up to more machines than I could count and nearly everything that could be monitored, was. One thing that helped to make it easier was that the NICU doctors and nurses were absolutely amazing. They kept us informed about their condition, let us know what to expect and they didn’t even get mad when I asked them the same questions day after day.
Finally, after 8 weeks, they were moved from the high-risk room into small incubators and eventually moved into regular cribs. Although they gained steady weight from the beginning, they still looked so small. What was even more amazing is how obvious it was that they knew who we were. Maybe it was all the talking and reading we did with them while they were still in the womb, but even the staff was amazed at how they honed in on our voices whenever we talked with them.
Despite how small they were at birth, once they were stabilized, the doctors were realistic, but very positive. They let us know the risk and percentages, but really made us feel like everything was going to be ok. The hallways of the NICU were lined with inspiring stories about babies who were born as small as 1.3lbs and grew up to be just fine. Without the work done by the March of Dimes, there is no way that all these amazing stories would have been possible. There is no doubt in our minds that the March of Dimes literally saved the lives of our two beautiful girls. Now 10 months old, Sara and Soraya are doing great. Soraya is crawling all over the house and, we think, is just about to start walking and Sara is up to about a 10-word vocabulary. They are both ahead of the curve in every category and are fully caught up to other children their age (except for their weights!). We cannot thank the March of Dimes enough for all the money they raise and all the research it pays for, you really cannot put a price on the value of life.
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